Press Announcements

S.P. Vijayakumar, a postdoctoral scientist in biology, led a team of researchers on an expedition to isolated hills in Southern India where they discovered a new, ancient lineage of frogs. With a group of scientists that included R. Alexander Pyron, the Robert F. Griggs Associate Professor of Biology, Vijayakumar located the new species—Astrobatrachus kurichiyana, or the “Starry Dwarf Frog”—on a forest floor within the remote Western Ghats mountain range. The discovery could solve evolutionary questions in one of the world’s major biodiversity hotspots.

Professor of Astrophysics Chryssa Kouveliotou and an international team of researchers provided new insights into Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, and their relations to supernova. GRB explosions are so massive that they should always produce visible supernovae. But some supernova do not have associated GRBs. The global research group observed a hot cocoon around the jets of matter that serves as the missing link connecting supernovae and GRBs.

James Clark, the Ronald Weintraub Professor of Biology, led an international team of researchers who discovered a new bird-like species of dinosaur called Xiyunykus pengi during an expedition to Xinjiang, China. The discovery fills in a missing evolutionary link for an enigmatic group of dinosaurs that share many characteristics with birds, including bird-like skulls and many small teeth instead of the large, sharp teeth seen in other dinosaurs.

A collection of censored political cartoons by fired Pittsburgh Post-Gazette artist Rob Rogers were first seen by a public audience at a nationally recognized Corcoran School of the Arts and Design exhibition titled “Spiked: The Unpublished Political Cartoons of Rob Rogers.” The gallery features 10 unpublished Rogers cartoons and eight sketches.

The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design acquired hundreds of sculptures, paintings and photographs from the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s permanent collection, laying the foundation for an estimable research collection that will be accessible to Corcoran students as well as faculty, staff and the public. The 18 paintings, 642 photographs, 93 prints and 15 sculptures gifted to the Corcoran School include works by Ansel Adams, Eugene Delacroix, Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark and William Wegman.

Professor of Chemistry Stuart Licht and his team of researchers are finalists in the $20 million NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE competition for their C2CNT project, a low-energy, low-cost method of transforming carbon dioxide into harmless and widely-used carbon nanotubes. The greenhouse gas reduction technology developed in Licht’s lab may potentially impact climate change.

Professor of Anthropology Alison Brooks led a team of international collaborators, including scientists from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, that discovered evidence of early humans in East Africa using coloring materials and obtaining a range of raw materials from distant sources— activities which imply the existence of social networks—about 320,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought.

A study by Bernard Wood, professor of human origins at the GW Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, and a team of Columbian College alumni showed that the average brain size of human ancestors increased gradually over 3 million years, growing to more than three times larger than our closest living relatives.

Four Columbian College astrophysicists are part of a global group of scientists who collaborated to identify and study the first confirmed observation of two merging neutron stars, a so-called kilonova. The existence of a kilonova—an explosive event roughly 1,000 times brighter than a nova—had long been suggested but was never definitively witnessed until now.

An international team of scientists including Arnaud Martin, assistant professor of biology, made a breakthrough in understanding how genetics and evolution work in concert to shape biodiversity by investigating the complex color patterns of butterfly wings. Martin used CRISPR gene-editing technology to study the role of the WntA gene in the formation of shapes and colors on butterfly wings—and how they diversify.

GW Assistant Professor of History Joel Blecher recently discovered the new manuscripts of two previously unknown versions of “Fath al-Bari,” a classic work that shaped the way Sunni Muslims understand
Muhammad’s sayings and practices. Dr. Blecher visited the Suleymaniye Library in Istanbul in 2014 to examine a database of digitized manuscripts that can only be accessed in person, with the goal of learning more about how medieval Muslims
interpreted Muhammad’s sayings and practices, called hadith. The manuscripts reveal how medieval Islamic scholars drafted and revised their understanding of Muhammad’s teachings to the early Muslim community.

Research Professor of Physics Larry Medsker announced a new STEM initiative called GWNoyce. Named after the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, this initiative offers science, technology, engineering and mathematics majors
the opportunity to receive teacher training and scholarships for agreeing to teach in high-need school districts across the country after graduating from GW.

Researchers led by Lisa Bowleg, Professor of Applied Social Psychology at the George Washington University, have developed a new tool to catalog police and law enforcement interactions with black men, the Police and Law Enforcement (PLE) Scale, with the hope of documenting people’s experiences and perceptions of police-based discrimination. The study found that police-based discrimination is associated with depression symptoms such as sadness, hopelessness and loss of interest and ambition. Because of this, the authors believe that police-based discrimination should be considered a public health threat.

A new study by Bernard Wood, Professor of Human Origins at the GW Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, has provided firsthand evidence that bonobos may be more closely linked, anatomically, to human ancestors than common chimpanzees.
Previous research suggested this theory at the molecular level, but this is the first study to compare in detail the anatomy of the three species.

A new study led by Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology Sarah Calabrese found that medical providers who prescribe PrEP, which stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis and is essential to to curbing the number of new HIV diagnoses, do not see widespread increases in risky sexual behavior among their patients as a result. As such, providers do not consider such behavior change to be a reason to discontinue or limit PrEP.